Tag Archives: Scripting

The other day I blogged about getting Cisco VPN to stay connect in Vista. The fix was a constant ping. It is all good but then you have this CMD window open all day in your taskbar, just taking up space, etc.

I decided to workaround it.

I created a .vbs (Visual Basic Script) called pingserver.vbs and put this in it:

(replace servername with your name of the server you want to constant ping)

Then in Cisco VPN. Options Menu->Application Launcher. Check "enable" and browse to your VBS. Then when you connect it will run that VBS file, and you will have a hidden constant ping going to your server. Nice..

You will notice there isn’t much difference, except when you want to load from a string, you use xmlDoc.loadXml instead of just xmlDoc.Load .. I wish I could have found that in the documentation somewhere (maybe it’s there and I just didn’t look hard enough) :)

So, recently working on some things, I have noticed the HUGE difference between VBA and VB.NET, specifically with turning bytes into bitmaps.. (assume GiveMeBytes() returns a byte array that is a bitmap)

Now, maybe there is an easier way in VBA/VB6 to do it, but this is the way I learned way back in the day. I am sure you can do something with the FileSystemObject (I am guessing)..

You notice that the VB.NET snippet mostly deals with converting bytes to MemoryStream to Bitmap, and the saving is 1 line, whereas the VBA is really nothing with converting but mostly deals with saving the file. Can we get the best of both worlds? I am not sure, but I still like the .NET implementation better, it just seems “cleaner” to me, and the VBA just seems “dirty”, but they both do the same thing.. (notice in the VBA I didn’t strongly type the bitImage Dim)

The other day, I was tasked with moving all objects from one SQL Server Reporting Services instance to another. I know you can move the database itself, but then you run into issues with encryption keys etc. I just wanted to move the objects. I know that pretty much everything in SSRS is extensible, so I knew I could write something to do it, but before I went out and coded it, I Googled first to see if someone else had something. Turns out there is an awesome utility: Reporting Services Scripter. Works like a charm!

Ok, so this afternoon I watched the movie “Proof” – really good movie. In the movie, they talk about the number 1729, about how it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. It also is a natural number – when its digits are added together, produces a sum which, when multiplied by its reversed self, yields the original number.

Just for the helluva it, I decided to write a little program in C# to do this. It would be nice if there was an easier way to reverse strings in .NET, maybe there is and I just don’t know. Anyways, I love how movies can get you into things you never thought you would get into.. now I only wonder what I will code up when I get back from the bars..